Billings, what do you mean we cannot live here?” Leo’s jaw tensed. “As your landlord, I see fit to make sure that all my dwellings are living in moral—” “We are not sinning together. She is my cousin,” Leo cried out. Clarissa stood behind Leo, crying. “This is how it must be. One of you must leave. I cannot allow this atrocity to continue. It is my sole responsibility to assure my tenants that they live in a wholesome environment,” Billings said. He backed away from their door. “I will leave at once,” Leo told her after Billings was gone. “What has gotten into him that he’s suddenly all noble?” She clutched her throat, for she could feel a fit of hysterics about to take over. “You are all I have in this world, cousin. You are the reason I keep going.” “It is the same for me. We both lost our family in that tenement housing disaster sixteen years ago, and we were just small children. We escaped from the orphanage a few years after that. We have survived all this together.
